


i made this bed & i can't fall asleep in it (the gospel of judas)

by marxistjudas (newbie1990)



Category: Christian Bible, Christian Bible (New Testament)
Genre: Angst, Angst with an Ambiguous Ending, Doubt, M/M, Sexual Content, Sexual Fantasy, Sheol - Freeform, Theology, Unrequited Love, Zealot Judas, imo this is less painful than these tags are making it sound, military occupation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 13:04:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21198116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newbie1990/pseuds/marxistjudas
Summary: he has all the time in the world. so judas tells his story.





	i made this bed & i can't fall asleep in it (the gospel of judas)

**Author's Note:**

> i think the only thing you need to know ahead of time is that the greek phrase means 'fear not'. 
> 
> title from brand new's millstone, although i'm still not entirely convinced i shouldn't have stolen my own fic title and used 'out of their forgiveness supplies' or some variation from 'you won't know', because that song basically reads as a soundtrack for this story. then again, every one of their songs could be about jesus/judas, probably. (i think jesse lacey is fucking terrible & i won't spend money on his music, but i do love their songs.)
> 
> (okay, the geography is Bad bc i can't figure out whether galilee as a whole was a Fishing Hole Nowhere (herod was doing all these Grand Cosmopolitan Building Projects there so it seems unlikely??) but also the account of the man who went through the roof is in galilee generally, not just nazareth. so idek)

you wouldn’t know. you couldn’t be expected to know. it was anger that did it, the kind of anger that is almost madness. fuel running through my veins, flaming like a sacrifice.

i loved him. you can believe me or not, but i think i really did.

~

there’s little left here to do but tell and retell my own story. i’ve looked at it from every angle. words are like oases in a desert of silence. i am so tired. one last time. one last chorus. and then i go.

~

you might have heard the stories they told about me, the stories where i was the hero, the stories where i was nothing but a bit-part villain. none of them are true. the truth of it belongs to me. and him, i suppose, of course. always him.

the love i had for him a noose around my neck, a love that tasted like bile and spat sparks like hatred. a love that wrote us a whole other story, one i tell myself. it is my dream, for there is no sleep in this place, only silence.

he called me. he called me not because of my zeal for israel or the lord, but because he looked upon me and loved me; knew me and loved me.

the others spoke so often of love, of friendship, of brotherhood, the press of his forehead against theirs, the tightness of his embrace, such a fierce determination that they be sure his mission was _for_ them, for them and their countrymen and their mothers and daughters and wives.

i was so sure he couldn’t love me, so caught up in the ways i loved him that could never be returned. i burned with jealousy for the times they made him laugh around the fire, the times he looked upon them with pride as they prayed and the child was made well.

we travelled together, sleeping beneath the stars and the roofs of strangers, always together, at banquets and watching him speak and read torah as if the words were song, presence-bread and honey passing his lips.

~

he did not call me first. i did not go looking for a messiah. i was fierce and certain and sad, determined that like the maccabees we had to raise our own saviours, that God would fall with our swords like fire. i knew i would die for the cause, would kill for the cause. i wanted to, i raged against soldiers i had not yet seen. nazareth was small, a provincial little place full of fishermen, and while they would tramp through and cause us trouble on their way to other places, they were not a common feature upon our streets. my sister was wed to a man in jerusalem, and she sent us oblique words that spurred us into furies.

and all this time, there was murmurs of a man. a man with healing hands, a man even john the baptizer would bow to. the baptizer had spoken truth to the faces of antipas' men themselves; there were few we respected more. we were hardly zealots, here by the shore, our group who met after dark and forged weapons from tools, but we liked the way they thought, the way the anger made us feel almost useful.

and then he came to us, walking our streets with his men - his boys, children barely growing stubble. we followed the crowds - so many bodies, so many cries for help that one could hardly hear him. and then the roof opened, light flooding the room and straw fluttering to earth, shrieks of surprise. and the man who had never walked, he stood and he rolled his mat and he walked home.

i could not speak to him, after, nor at the feast - but that evening, he found me. his eyes were wide and dark and full of promise, and i didn’t need him to be a healer or a teacher or a messiah, i only needed him to keep looking at me. so i joined him.

~

i longed for him to trace my veins with his thumb, to swipe across the soft skin of my wrist and heal the way they hummed in his presence, or perhaps to set them alight. i longed to taste the inside of that mouth that spoke of the kingdom, that dropped sayings like pearls, that blessed and cursed and sang with power. i felt that light might crackle to life between us, might burn me like a theophany, that i might be ash, scattered and dispersed, blown away with the chaff. i was never to be chosen, but i might lick honey from his lips for that purest and most precious of moments before the dark swallowed me.

he knew what people thought before they spoke, when they huddled in corners and murmured cruelties. he must have known what i kept behind my empty eyes, what i washed from me each morning, cold cold water purifying me once more. he never said. i never knew if that was sanction or the worst condemnation.

~

we sit around the fire, wine warm in our bellies, the stars stark white above us. he knows the names of the constellations, he knows the scriptures of the firmament and the lights in the sky.

‘the woman today,’ john says, half asleep, ‘why would she not heal?’

and in that question lies my every doubt. his eyes are on mine. ‘what do you think, judas?’ he says.

this is not a debate, i think. this is a woman’s life. i feel the wine slosh inside me, turning sour like vinegar. i press my lips together and he sits beside me. ‘you have little faith in me,’ he says. ‘when the day comes, all will be risen, whole and well.’

‘but when is the day, rabbi?’ i say. my voice is hoarse. i do not think about these things; i do not ask these questions. the others do - they think he has an answer. i fear with everything within me that he does not.

‘there are some things,’ he says, almost tenderly, ‘that only the father knows. who are we to decide what is known and what is not?’

i almost hate him in that moment. i almost kiss him, although john is murmuring to peter about bread for the morning, the question already forgotten.

~

he walks with me to the next town. we have few belongings with us - if we are in need we could pitch a tent, buy rooms in an inn, but our principles prohibit the hoarding of possessions, of a home to lay our heads. my part of my father’s house has been sold to my brother, and i may not return home. i have faith in this man, i remind myself, as he walks beside me. i trust him with my life, or my death. i fear he wishes me a death without meaning - i thought to die fighting, to die watching roman soldiers burn. yesterday he healed a centurion’s son, and a jewish woman is still on her sickbed, her children waiting for lives without their mother.

‘judas,’ he says, ‘do you trust me?’

‘i believe you are -’ he holds up a hand.

‘do you trust _me_, judas?’

i want to cry. i do not know him. i know his parables and his miracles and his many strange names. i know the scriptures that speak of his coming, but i do not know him.

he speaks again, softer. ‘do you love me, judas?’

i swallow a sob. i know the curve of his neck in the sunlight, the soft voice he uses to talk to children, the way his face looks almost human when he laughs - like a man without a mission, a man without a world to save. ‘as God himself.’

‘you know me,’ he says. ‘you know enough to choose.’

‘you keep saying - you keep talking about your death -’

he does not look back at me, and he is speaking to john in a low and certain voice, and john is laughing.

~

i have loved many men before him, men i saw across from me at wedding feasts, men who were my brothers’ friends or my own, men with whom i learned scripture or spoke of war. you do not have to be a man’s bosom friend, you barely have to know him at all, to love him. loving a stranger is easy, loving his beauty and thinking of his lips in the moment before dreams claim you. loving a friend is fraught with tension and fear, a momentary row stealing love away and replacing it with gritted teeth and resentment. i have never had a lover; i do not know the shape of that kind of love.

i was married, once. she was warm and pliant and lovely, and i wanted her not at all. i pressed my face to her neck and thought of the eyes of the man with whom we had broken bread that evening, thought of how it would be to grip a man as i had never even touched myself, dreading uncleanliness, and with shock and fear i spilled my seed inside her. i do not have to worry about her touch, now. there are no wives in the kingdom.

he has never been wed, and peter grumbles about it from time to time, thinking me an ally. ‘he does not know what it is to desire a woman,’ he says, twisting his bread in his hands, and those words will not leave my head for weeks.

peter is loyal, though. peter will ask for forgiveness for his complaints, and peter will be forgiven.

none of you, i think, have any idea of the burden i carry. and then we see women without husbands, daughters who will not be in the same room as a man, and i feel shame for calling my sins a burden at all.

~

we are sitting beside the water, cooling our feet, and i wish i could talk with him as the men do in their groups, make casual discussion of sin that is not known. sin, i think, that cannot be shaken off or helped, that clings to you like your own sweat, and no matter how you wash, will trickle from your skin again.

but he is talking of love, again, of forgiveness. and i can forgive peter for the way he accuses me of theft when the money bag is half empty, can forgive john for being loved more than i ever will be, can forgive thomas for watching me, always, when he asks, ‘would you die for him?’ i cannot forgive them. i will not forgive them, and i will not forgive him for asking.

‘they are destroying our people,’ i say, my voice low and fierce.

‘you need not stay,’ he says.

‘and if God is on your side, this side that will not take up arms against our destroyers? how can i join an army that God is against? who will save our nation if not him?’ i am filled with such fury, and my eyes prickle as if they are alight.

‘God is not only the God of israel -’ i make to stand and he takes my arm. ‘it is not God that will destroy our people,’ he says.

‘no, he will merely watch as his messengers do his work.’

~

he finds me, later, by the trees. ‘do you think God does not wish to save his people?’ he says. his voice is so sad, but then he says, ‘do you think there are no widows, no poor, no strangers, among the nations?’

‘i do not care for the nations,’ i say. ‘i care for my people.’

‘perhaps you should.’

‘can you really see no difference between us and them?’

everything between us hurts, every breath. ‘i love every one of you,’ he says, ‘and i am not asking you to put down your arms only for the nations, i am asking it for your sake as well.’

‘peace is good for the soul?’ i can taste the cruelty in my own words.

‘you do not know what i know; you do not see what i see, judas. you will never see it.’ there is a pain in his voice i haven’t heard before, a fear. ‘and you will never listen to me.’ it is a proclamation, a prophecy, and i hate him for making it.

‘then i suppose there is no point in your trying to convince the damned.’

he flinches, and i do not care.

~

sometimes i wish i had killed him because he did not love me. that would be so simple; the brutal ease of jealousy. he loved no-one as i loved him - he was never found in corners kissing mary or joanna; even when john slept on his breast it was as if they were father and child. perhaps if he had my story would have been easier. i could have given him up and asked for his forgiveness in the same day, and i might - this might…

this could never have gone any other way.

i wish i could escape my own head.

there is movement, now, in the dark, in the grey, and i take back my wish like a miser and his coin. my bones are made of terror, sharp and white and still as a startled beast. there is no breath here, but if there was mine would be loud enough to get me killed.

i am choking on my own heart.

he sits beside me, as if this were some judean shore, and i cry tears with no water, no eyes.

‘i make my bed in sheol, you are there,’ i croak out, and he laughs.

it does not matter if he is real or not. ‘it matters very much indeed,’ he says. ‘if i am real, you still might be saved.’ i wish to God he did not sound so hopeful.

‘you will be waiting an eternity for me to say i was wrong,’ i tell him.

‘tell me why, then,’ he says.

~

he keeps talking about death. not a proud death, a death to inspire the masses, not a death earned in blood. a sacrifice, a death he claims he can defeat. it is nonsense, the words of a madman. i have thought him many things, but never foolish, never sick.

i take him by the shoulders. ‘lord, you need to rest. you are tired.’

he brushes my hands away, eyes bright with fury. ‘i told you you would never understand. why do you not leave me, why do you torment me with the words of your father?’

i want to grab him and kiss him, as if that would convince him, as if that would change a thing.

in the alternate version of this story, i do. i press my lips against his and touch the curve of his jaw, the place where stubble grows, and i rub my thumb against that prickly growth, the place between the scratching and the unexpected softness of his skin.

(and what then? i cannot imagine he would hit me, as some men might, can’t imagine he would take me to the elders he already swears want him dead. i can imagine he might forgive me, and the thought makes me furious. this is my story, after all, and i always end up telling it my way.)

in my version, the story worn smooth with retellings, he kisses me back, presses his lips against me like fury, like a rebuttal. i tangle my fingers in the soft warmth of his hair, let out a gasp into his mouth. his hands are pulling tight at my tunic, and i can feel his patient eyes on me, here and now.

‘are you trying to shock me, judas?’

this is the point where, usually, i hold tight to my control of the story, push past all the parts of me that are so sure he would pull away, would recite the litany of his regrets and excuses; and trace his lips so reverently, remember the shape of them, trace their red wet insides as i never did, as no-one ever did, on earth. i brush my lips so softly over his eyelids, knowing the warmth of the brown fluttering beneath, the way those eyes could swallow you whole. i let myself pretend this is love, whole and entire, and not the fantasies of a man with only his own mind left to entertain him.

(not alone, any more. i want to push that thought away too.)

these are the times when the inside of my head feels like eternity, where there is finally the peace and quiet to explore the things i never let myself think, back then. i trace the bridge of his nose with my lips and let myself imagine a whole new laugh of his, one none of us ever had time to catalogue or examine, one soft and gentle, almost a giggle, something pure and solely between the two of us.

(i swear his gaze is pitying now.)

i can imagine the taste of his thighs, the sour sweat of them, his coarse black hair soft like thread against my tongue, the heat of them worse than open flames, almost enough to keep me warm in this place with neither hot nor cold. i imagine the sound of his gasp and the sight of his head falling back, and somehow i remember lust, here, a shadow of myself, stirring into something half-alive.

i imagine taking the burning, living hardness of him into my mouth, slick damp flesh and the wet sounds of -

‘_enough_.’

i swallow, rub my hands on my thighs. the habits of physicality do not leave me so easily.

‘i did not come here to find out what you wish had happened. tell me the truth.’ i don’t know if he intends to be cruel or not, if he intends to pull the heart out of me and throw it in my face like i’m a cat bringing mice to her master, unwanted treasures that bring only disgust.

i have spent a thousand nights imagining the shape and the taste of him, and knowing that it is not real will not stop me doing so.

i look at him. he is real, the only real thing here. he always felt like that, even then.

i don’t want to remember the truth.

‘i never wanted you to die,’ i say. i reach out towards him and he lets me take his hand, trace the shape of his knuckles through his skin. he’s warm, a minor miracle. ‘how am i touching you?’

‘everything is possible for God,’ he says, and i know he would press his lips to mine if there was any chance i would take it as nothing but friendship. i want him to do it anyway.

(i met God, i think. and the first thing i did was kiss him. that’s a lie, of course, but it’s a new story to tell myself.)

he doesn’t, and i drop his hand. ‘can’t you leave me to my fantasies?’

‘life is waiting for you.’

‘but not love.’

his eyes are soft and sharp all at once. ‘you know nothing of what is beyond.’ i know it’s not him, though. all his talk of kingdoms with no marriage. i feel hollowed out and cold, as if i might cry. none of this means anything. he doesn’t speak.

~

‘my father?’

‘your father the devil.’

(i think of lying next to him, warm, legs tangled. he is so beautiful, in my head. he’s beautiful here too.)

‘abraham is my father,’ i say, fierce and furious, and he _laughs_.

(i close my eyes.)

there was silver and there were nooses and crosses and -

but first there was him, laughing at me. at my people, at my history. was it really like that? was it me that twisted his words; was he ever the man i feared he was? was he ever the man i _hoped_ he was?

even now, with him sitting right next to me, all i can think of is him tilting my head up and _fixing_ this, fixing me with his lips like a fairy story, like the myths of the fools and the heathens.

‘what do you know,’ he says, ‘about what came next?’

maybe he wants to spare me from recounting that walk to the temple, my nails digging into the heels of my palms and tears running furious down my cheeks. every step i wanted to turn back, and every step i _just. kept. going_. they were forgivable; they hadn’t known him, only their own fears, only their own certainty that he would raise himself up as king and get them all killed. the sadducees fearing he would shake up their comfortable little families, worlds away from the life even the most fortunate of the rest of us lived. the pharisees so disappointed with the rabbi-turned-blasphemer, talking nonsense riddles that no messiah would ever say, a madman who thought he was God. the men who only thought of what those swords could do to the necks of their children, of how much safer they’d be with this man turned in.

i loved him. i couldn’t want him dead even if he hated me, hated everything i had ever stood for. i couldn’t turn him to the romans if my life depended on it. but i _did_.

(they didn’t even come for me, after. peter and john and all of them, the men who’d wanted to fight off the high priest’s servants - i had to do their dirty work for them. if i had a throat i’d be weeping at his feet. some part of me, weak and small and pathetic, wants to try just for the feeling of his arms around me.

i can hear the sound of those coins on the floor, bouncing like pebbles, like broken glass, like _nothing_, a mistake that could be swept up. i couldn’t breathe, then. who could sweep up blood and bones and make it right again? who could -

breathe life -

into his dead dead

_dead_ bones

there needed to be a reckoning -)

‘what do you know?’ he says again. his hand might be on my back. i probably don’t have one, but there’s something, some attempt at comfort i don’t deserve.

‘i never meant for you to -’

‘i _know_,’ he says. ‘tell me what you know about _after_.’

so i don’t remember the rope around my neck and the time it took to find a strong enough branch; how my hands shook, how i wanted to stop but i didn’t turn back before, did i, so -

‘there was a light,’ i said. ‘even here, there was a light, just for a moment. i saw… they wrote about me.’

he laughs, soft enough i know he’s not mocking me. (in my retelling, he brushes my cheek, just for a moment, so gentle, as if he’s wiping away tears.)

‘you’re here,’ i say. ‘i know that.’

‘i did it,’ he says, smiling at me, quiet and proud like a child at his bar mitzvah. my heart aches, the whole of me hurts. i love him so much, and i have no right to that.

‘why did you come here?’

‘why do you think?’

i let out a horrible sound, something between a sob and a laugh and a shriek of terror.

‘μὴ φοβοῦ,’ he says, gentler than an angel ever could.

i kiss him, again, and try to forget the last time. i was trying to forget his lips even while they were beneath mine, trying to replace them with every time i meant this in friendship, in loyalty, in longing hidden so far away.

he doesn’t trace his tongue along mine, doesn’t gasp so helpless and sweet into my mouth, and i don’t suck on his lips until they’re thick in my mouth, don’t map out the skin of his neck, the sharp edges of his bones beneath the sweep of my tongue, the sharp sounds of swallowed breaths setting everything within me alight. i don’t trace the inside of his lower lip with my tongue, again, as if i can wipe away every trace of - not thinking about that -

i don’t press my lips to his chest, above his beating heart, breathing in life, life, life - don’t think about it - i can’t trace that warm skin, i can only bury my face between his open thighs, his fingers sliding behind my ear, so gentle, so tender, i can only press kisses to soft damp hair, can only suck until i taste salt and bitterness.

‘i want to hear the way you sound when you come,’ i don’t murmur against his jaw as i don’t press my thumb against the underside of his cock, as i don’t squeeze and stroke him up and down, laughing at some stupid joke we never told about ladders to heaven - that tenderness, that sweetness that’s only between lovers, that is not mine, not ours.

he doesn’t moan at the words, helpless, i don’t bury my face against his throat, overcome with the loveliness of him. i don’t know what the warmth of his come feels like as it spills over my hand, holding him through it, lips on his neck through every pulse.

‘do you ever wish… did you ever miss it?’ i can’t form the words, and he looks down and doesn’t answer.

‘there are more important things,’ he says.

not to me, i want to say, but i’m the man who killed him, the man he still wants to save. i have no right to any of this.

‘you could come with me,’ he says.

part of me is always going to want to wrap my arms around his neck and beg him to love me back. i feel like a clotting wound, itchy and weeping and vulnerable. he waits.

i close my eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> unfortunately, i can't read jesus as anything but celibate (at least w/r/t relationships between humans and God), so as much as i'd like to write requited jesus/judas i cannot. you can read judas as an unreliable narrator and interpret jesus' actions entirely differently if you don't have my hang-ups, though, although obviously no-one has ever needed permission to do Death of the Author.
> 
> sincere apologies if i've managed to do a really antisemitic interpretation of the sadducees, pharisees, or any other character/s. i was trying to avoid that - and tbh i don't know that many pharisees had a voice in the council, meaning i may have overemphasised their role by mentioning them as a group at all.
> 
> my apologies for any historical inaccuracy - i'm a theology student and it is My Theological Opinion that what with cleanliness laws and consistently being around other people judas would never have masturbated. some of my decisions were based on offhand, half-remembered knowledge - galilee (or at least nazareth?) wasn't an outpost for soldiers, or at least would have experienced less military occupation than other parts of judea - that i then turned into minor plot points - judas couldn't be a Legit Zealot because of his location.


End file.
